Robert Spencer: Saint Anselm College: The Most Unsafe Campus In the U.S.?

Over at FrontPage and TruthRevolt today, I discuss the curious case of Saint Anselm College, and how “security risk” is the new “shut up.”

DiSalvo and the latte-sipping Levesque: unable to implement basic security measures, or just foes of free speech?

The controversies at the University of Missouri and Yale make it indisputable that America’s universities and colleges are today less institutions of higher learning than centers of Leftist indoctrination and agitprop. As if aware, however, that forcible suppression of unwelcome points of view is contrary to the very idea of a university, today’s academic authoritarians cast about for fig leaves to cover up their slavish adherence to politically correct norms. At Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire, officials have recently invoked security risks to cover up their hostility to points of view that veer too far from the acceptable Leftist line.

This is, unfortunately, a story in which I play a part. Several years ago, a student group invited me to speak at Saint Anselm. Posters were being put up advertising the talk when Saint Anselm’s then-President, Father Jonathan DeFelice, O.S.B., canceled my appearance, reportedly citing complaints he had received from Muslim students at the school. Islamic groups, like their Leftist allies, share a taste for shutting down their foes rather than engaging their ideas, and Fr. DeFelice was happy to oblige them.

If the story had ended there, Saint Anselm would be no worse than dozens of other colleges and universities where officials caved to pressure from Muslims who played the victimhood card to shut down those who air inconvenient truths about the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat. But it doesn’t: the following year, after Fr. DeFelice had retired and been replaced as President of the college by Dr. Steven R. DiSalvo, Saint Anselm’s philosophy department invited me to be the guest speaker at a symposium.

DiSalvo, following his predecessor’s lead, nixed that appearance as well. Several Saint Anselm professors balked at this, complaining to DiSalvo that colleges were supposed to be centers of free inquiry and intellectual engagement, and that he was acting contrary to what institutions of higher learning were supposed to be all about by banning points of view in line with political correctness.

Cornered, DiSalvo found an excuse: he was all for free inquiry and unpopular opinions (the unpopular question in my case being the rather obvious point that Islam is not really a religion of peace), but he just couldn’t allow me to speak on campus because I had received death threats. He explained that, were I to be present on campus, Saint Anselm students would be endangered – what if a violent extremist were to burst onto campus while I was speaking?

The dubiousness of this explanation is obvious. Numerous people who have received death threats have spoken on college campuses all over the country without incident. Since I first began receiving death threats, I have spoken at universities nationwide, including UCLA, Temple, Penn State, UNC, UVA, SUNY in both Binghamton and Stony Brook, Brown, Cal Poly, and many, many others. When people who have threatened appear in public, they generally are in the company of security personnel who are equipped and prepared to deal with any incident. Why Saint Anselm considered any kind of security arrangements to be inadequate, DiSalvo didn’t explain, leaving open the question: why is Saint Anselm College so much more unsafe than all other campuses? Other colleges and universities nationwide can and do host speakers who have been threatened, and take measures to ensure everyone’s safety. Saint Anselm, by its own admission, can’t do that.

As implausible as it was, DiSalvo stuck with his security excuse. Often, as I speak around the country, I do TV appearances from a local studio; on one swing back up to New England last summer, however, a Fox News producer told me that I couldn’t do the segment from the Videolink at Saint Anselm’s New Hampshire Institute of Politics (NHIOP), as she had been told that I was not welcome to use the Videolink there.

I found this curious, and thought I’d go by Saint Anselm to ask why, certain that any misunderstanding could be cleared up. While there, I discovered that it was again because of the death threats I had received. But while attempting to discuss this with Neil Levesque, the head of NHIOP, I was threatened and assaulted by a Saint Anselm security guard, and told that I was henceforth barred from the campus on pain of arrest for criminal trespass. That’s how a Leftist “institution of higher learning” deals with dissenting points of view these days.

The Presidential candidates should take note of all this as they travel through New Hampshire. In the run-up to the first primary they often make appearances at Saint Anselm; they should be aware that Saint Anselm officials believe themselves to be utterly unable to stop those who make death threats from attacking their targets on campus. Savvy candidates should avoid Saint Anselm at all costs – and parents whose children are in school there should quickly transfer them to another school, one that is better able to protect its charges.

Saint Anselm is not alone in its unctuous and self-righteous authoritarianism: Adams State University in Colorado has recently barred one of its former professors from campus, also on pain of arrest for trespassing, after he publicly questioned some of the university’s policies. Less subtly, University of Missouri professor Melissa Click recently called for “muscle” to strong-arm a student photographer who had entered a meeting where he was unwelcome.

Saint Anselm College, like so many other outposts of American academia, has swiftly descended from the days when ideas could be entertained and dismissed on their merits alone. But as ridiculous as it is, the contention of DiSalvo and Levesque that those who have been threatened should not venture onto campus should be taken at face value. Anyone else who has received death threats and goes to Saint Anselm should know that there they are exposed and vulnerable. Who wants to be on a campus that claims that it can’t take elementary security measures?

In a world of microaggressions, trigger warnings, safe spaces, mansplaining, and so on, private academia subverts the free exchange of ideas by banning figures whose ideas they do not support – witness the brouhaha over freedom fighter Ayaan Hirsi Ali at Brandeis. At this point I am not just barred from speaking at Saint Anselm College, but even from setting foot on its campus. This is a new tactic in the academic Left’s attempts to suppress thoughts and ideas of which it disapproves. St Anselm’s pretext for silencing me is taking censorship and this suppression of ideas to a new level. As Mizzou and other campus grow increasingly hostile to any dissenting views, Saint Anselm’s, firmly clutching its “security risk” fig leaf, has placed itself firmly on the side of the naked opposition to the freedom of speech and free inquiry.

Schools have been dangerous for decades. This is why our children are leaving Christianity and embracing alternative values. They are being asked to taste the forbidden fruits.

Take your children out of public schools until the schools clean up their staff and curricula. Let them mature doing volunteer work well away from the poison. The lower enrolments is the best pressure we can apply for cleaning up standards.

I did. I filed an assault complaint with the Goffstown, NH police department. As I was doing so, the corrupt cop who took down my complaint explained to me how important it was for his department to keep good relations with Saint Anselm’s security services. That set off alarm bells. Then he got back to me a few days later with false statements from Saint Anselm staff, including Levesque, covering for the guard. The cop was clearly in the College’s hip pocket, and was immensely unprofessional and contemptuous. The College is playing a dangerous game, as this guard is unhinged and could one day attack a student in a similar way. In any case, I will be pursuing civil charges.

Yes, several Saint Anselm officials colluded and told the cop falsehoods that were self-contradictory on their face. The problem was that the cop — I was later told that the Goffstown Police Department in all cases does the College’s bidding — refused to pursue the obvious contradictions in their story. Now that all that is on record, as patently false as it is, I don’t know that I have much recourse, other than to pursue civil avenues.

Hi Robert! This is really sickening. PC has taken a very dark turn. I was in LA last week. I do not know my way around and I had a bunch of sales meeting in different parts of the town. Often one of our sales people who resides and works there takes me around. This time there was a new person taking me. In the car he was listening to a bunch of BS that was being broadcast through NPR but the feed was from CNN. He was wearing a star of David and me not making any assumptions that he is a Jew, I asked him if is Jewish and he said yes. We then proceeded to talk about the event in France. He made me vomit. Yes it is wrong what they did but people should not be so poor, we should not blame muslims, we should have inter faith etc….I promptly called my boss back in NYC who shares my vision and political views as well and I told him I want some one else driving me around and told him why. He did. Stay safe and keep up the good work. m

All Educational Institutions ought to be closed until they are fit for the enrichment of minds rather than perversion. For a year we can send our kids to volunteer programs that are a far better maturing process than muslim funded colleges.

And who is going to close the educational institutions?? Me? You? The current leftist media and political leaders are themselsve anti-Free Speech…… they are only going to side with these corrupt universities! Then who is going to close these universities, Jeremiah? (Please forgive my attitude, I am simply trying to make a point.)

There is only one way that I know of for us to make the anti-Freedom institutions change their ways- vote for pro-free speech candidates. And anyone who has been reading my comments knows which presidential candidate for 2016 is going to put pressure on the media and universities to change their thuggish ways!

Thank you for your response. All you need to do is take your children out of school for a year and give them a maturing experience like overseas volunteer organizations. Assist the Salvation Army, the Adventist Hospitals or something that is the opposite of losing your children to the indoctrination of Saul Alinsky, Lenin and Mohammad, the pedophile. Your choice of course but I know some people are doing it and I hope others will follow. Don’t lose your children.

Yet another example of an institution of higher learning which has, quite sadly, become an institution of lower learning. This is the result of a half century of modern leftist nonsense which conservatism has had nothing to do with except that too many conservatives have not forcefully enough opposed this leftist rot which has so debased real education in the liberal arts and which disallows true freedom of expression.

Liberals have completely destroyed our education system. That’s why our universities, (and now our schools, thanks to Common Core), are full out Indoctrination Centers. We have gone from the Greatest Generation to the Generation of Degenerates.

Australian School Answering Machinehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0yW84xqKd0
This humorous video plays an alleged actual answering machine message at an Australian school after it instituted a policy that parents and students take responsibility for student failures. While this is quite funny, it is, also, sad because, in many cases, it is so true.

Thanks pard, I’ll read it and add it to my list. And believe me, you’re not nitpicking. You’re being helpful. I learned the difference between “negative” and “constructive” criticism a long time ago. I love people pointing out where I’m wrong and welcome criticism. Unfortunately Pamella Geller never learned that as she has blocked me from commenting on her website without the courtesy of telling me what my offense was. Getting blocked on LoonWatch is one thing. I feel like a dog who was kicked by its master. I can come off like a real idiot sometimes but at the same time I don’t mind getting a well deserved slap-down when I get out of line.

I used to know next to nothing about this issue until I happened to read The Haj by Leon Uris and Because They Hate by Brigitte Gabriel. (I actually heard her speak here in Riverside!). Today, almost four years later, I’ve got two filing cabinets literally stuffed with articles I’ve read, shelves piled with reports and essays, and books from floor to ceiling about this issue. And a big “STAND WITH ISRAEL” sign in my front window.

I refer to myself as a dumb-ass construction worker but when I see the willful ignorance out there and the Jew hatred looking like something from 1930’s Nazi Germany right here in my own country I’m kicking over the furniture and my comments sometimes reflect that.

Robert Spencer has been the only person of his stature to ever respond to my sometimes thoughtless tirades. I have a habit of pouring my frustrations out “on paper”. I don’t have many heroes but…..I religiously read Jihad Watch “with my morning paper”.

Liberals have completely destroyed our education system. That’s why our universities, (and now our schools, thanks to Common Core), are full out Indoctrination Centers. We have gone from the Greatest Generation to the Generation of Degenerates.

What is the University Diversity Scam?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g60ON91ClLA
America’s campuses, particularly those in California, spend tens of millions of dollars on administrators and programs to combat issues like sexism, homophobia, and racism on campus. But are these problems in any way prevalent at our universities? Or is this diversity bureaucracy a big waste of money? Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute explains.

To Robert Spencer- I am joining the conversation about 24 hours after this story first broke, but I want to go on record to thank you from the bottom of my heart for being the brilliant, brave and becoming gentleman you are. And please do not say that looks have nothing to do with a topic because, as my defense, the Japanese have a saying “FACE IS EVERYTHING.” Stay safe, please.

“Gifts from Heaven”: The Meaning of the American Victory over Japan, 1945 by John David Lewis | Foreign Policy & Defense, Historyhttps://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2007-winter/american-victory-over-japan-1945/
Read this article for parallels on Afghanistan and Iraq and with how we’re fighting terrorism today. We are totally failing when it comes to identifying the enemy, stating our objectives and destroying our enemies. We should do with Islam the same as we did with the other state religion in Japan; Shinto. This was a policy of NO negotiation. Our policy was “surrender or die”. There status as a “defeated enemy and the democratic reforms were hammered into the heads of every man, woman and child in Japan.

I attended a small 4 year state university in Central California , a farming area mixed with small towns .Some one could have dropped you into the main street coffee shop of any of these towns and you could have easily believed you were in Nebraska or Oklahoma and , in fact , many of the farmers there were displaced from their prior homes by the dust bowl . In the mid 70s , during the Viet Nam War , The school had many speakers . I don’t recall any from the right but I do recall Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden being there .This was during one of Hayden’s runs for office .Despite an obvious hatred of these two by at least half the audience , there was no attempt to impede their speeches .When they finished they were roundly booed but never threatened or stopped from speaking . Even then we were comfortable enough in our own skin with our own ideas not to be threatened or intimidated by the ideas of others . Make no mistake , we hated those people but still , at a relatively young age ,we defended their right to say what they believed . If I had known what the rules would become at the hands of the left , I’m not so sure how it would have gone down but i suspect no different. Unlike liberals , we feel that if the left openly states their positions , informed citizens will see them as the lies they are and reject them . I like many others gave them too much credit .

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